When Gander sold out years ago they were down but then improved. But I have not been to one in about five years. The last time I was at the Duluth store it was such a mess it looked like they just threw stuff from the truck out on the floor. Cabelas is opening a new store in 2014 at Woodbury, MN. Closer for me than Rogers. I will never go back to the Rogers store since the traffic is nuts and I nearly got taken out in a bad accident there. I get to the Scheels in Eau Claire some and they seem to have some good things yet.
I live w/in 30 mins of 3 different Ganders; and there's a huge BP 15 minutes away, and the two closest Cabelas are 45-60 mins away (opposite directions.) Around here, Gander's "staff" usually consists of 3 High School kids, one 75 year old codger behind the gun counter who can't handle speaking to more than one customer at a time, and a manager who is constantly running around checking prices and/or helping out the clueless high schooler ring up a hunting/fishing license, usually to someone who can't speak English and/or has no driver's license to copy off of. They never have more than one lane open at any time, and can NEVER ring up licenses anywhere but the front customer service desk. I rarely go in there for anything other than to browse the clearance hunting clothes rack or for in-store pickup on a sales item I order online. True story - I did stop in at the one in Ft. Wayne IN about a month ago so my dad could price compare a pistol he was looking at. They were $75 higher than the gun store less than a mile away. While Dad was at the gun counter i asked the "customer service" counter guy if they had any more of a trail cam that was in the flyer (was actually a pretty good price) to which the guy (middle aged guy) looked at me, shrugged his shoulders, and said he didn't know and said "you should go ask someone in hunting" and went back to his whining about how many hours he had to work with the other d-bag behind the counter. I tossed the flyer on the floor next to him and walked out. The BP here in Bolingbrook isn't much better for customer service and definitely not any cheaper, but at least they have a large selection and an indoor archery range, plus it's next to the DSW so the ol' lady can shoe shop if she gets bored while I walk around. Wish they had Scheels stores around here; ya'll seem to like them a lot.
